


The Past Still Ties You Down

by half_alive



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Gang World, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst, Breaking Up & Making Up, Canonical Character Death, Crimes & Criminals, Grief/Mourning, Growing Up Together, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Time Skips, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 14:29:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21393724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/half_alive/pseuds/half_alive
Summary: On another earth, Barry falls in love with the most hated man in Central City. Only, Central doesn’t know Len like he does. It didn’t grow up sleeping in the bed above him, the weight of his hands on each side of Barry’s face when his bullies had been especially cruel, wiping the blood from each of those knuckles while Len whispered, sounding so very lost, “I did what I had to do.”Where it looked at him and saw a monster, Barry saw only a man who’d never had much choice.
Relationships: Barry Allen/Leonard Snart
Comments: 6
Kudos: 130
Collections: DCU Big Bang 2019





	The Past Still Ties You Down

**Author's Note:**

> Emmatheslayer made some wonderful [art](https://emmatheslayer.livejournal.com/611913.html) for this that you should absolutely check out!

**March 21st, 2000**

Barry had always assumed he would be the kind of kid who grew up but never really left home. He’d move out, sure — go to college, get a job, have a family of his own someday — but he’d be back at his parents nearly every weekend, watching the wrinkles crease their foreheads and their hair turn grey. He thought he’d take care of them when their joints started aching, when they started to forget things, and that he’d have late night phone calls with his mom when he couldn’t get his kids to sleep where she’d tell him how hard it was to be a parent, but how worth it it was.

He tries to imagine the future now, watching the trees fly past the window as the city disappears behind them. His red backpack is on the seat beside him, full of the books Joe managed to snag from his bedroom and the clothes they let him pick up this morning.

He doesn’t get to picture his mother smiling down at her grandkids anymore, but he can’t find anything to replace it with.

“It’ll just be temporary,” Joe tells him when the car comes to a stop in front of a tall, skinny house that must have been painted white at some point, but is now just a peeling mess of brown wood and beige. Barry doesn’t answer. He pulls the straps of his backpack tighter and watches his feet so he doesn’t trip going up the steps.

Joe sighs. It’s clear he doesn’t know what to say. Barry used to think he had all the answers, but that stopped three days ago when it became clear that no one did.

A hand settles on his shoulder, heavy, just as the door creaks open and a woman with frizzy hair pulled into a ponytail smiles tiredly at them. “You must be Barry,” she says, her eyes never quite settling on him. She inches the door open a little further, enough for him to note the inside of the house isn’t much better than the outside. “Come in, please.”

Joe urges him forward with the hand on his shoulder, not letting go even as the woman leads them through the small space and up the stairs under the guise of giving them a tour. It isn’t much of one — there’s not a lot to see, and nearly everything can be seen while standing in one place. The second level is just bedrooms and two extra steps between the top of the stairs and the walls. There are four doors crammed into the small space, but she only opens one of them and gestures vaguely to another with a muttered, “Bathroom.”

He puts his backpack on the top bunk of one of the three pairs of beds in the room. There are no sheets on his or the one below it, but there’s a pillow falling off the headboard.

When they come back downstairs and the woman gives them space to say goodbye, Joe crouches down into Barry’s face and holds the back of his neck. He looks pained — sad in a way that Barry hadn’t seen until his mother bled out in the living room but has become intimately familiar with in the three days since. 

“I’ll be back before you know it. I’ve already started clearing out the office so we can turn it into your bedroom. We’re just waiting on the judge.”

He pauses. His skin is warm on Barry’s and, though he looks tired, the kindness in his eyes is one of the only things that is making this bearable. “It’s just temporary,” he repeats.

Even if it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself, Barry believes him.

**January 16th, 2015**

The nurse who brings him his belongings isn’t the same one who went over the sign out forms with him, or the one who walked him through his post-treatment plan. She hands the bag over with barely a smile, tells him his clothes are in the wardrobe tucked into the corner, and leaves as quickly as she came. Barry wonders if she’s judging him, or if he’s reading too much into it. Maybe she’s just had a long day. Or maybe she’s just not a friendly person.

Or, maybe she’s looked at his chart or his name and has made all the same assumptions as everyone else.

He tries not to dwell on it as he tugs the hospital-issue t-shirt over his head and pulls his own shirt off the hanger. It doesn’t fit the same as it did when he got here — there’s too much room in the arms and not enough in the midriff, where his stomach is thick with the bandages they’ve said not to take off for a few more hours. Even when he rakes his fingers through his hair, trying to tame it, the person staring back at him in the mirror is almost unrecognizable.

His phone is dead when he pulls it out of the bag along with his wallet, and he’s pretty sure none of the staff would lend him a charger if he asked, so he shoves it into his pocket without another thought.

Joe is waiting outside the hospital entrance, just like he thought he’d be. He’s got that same tired frown on his face that he always does these days, like he’s lost hope but is finding it harder to let go of his worry. 

“I’ll take the bus,” Barry says before Joe has the chance to start the fight they’ve been having for years now.

Joe just sighs. He’s getting grey around the temples, and the skin by his eyes is losing some of its elasticity. Barry’s not sure when that happened. “Barr,” he says in that tone he’s been using since he and Iris got into the baking chocolate when they were six. He scrubs a hand down his face, then shakes his head. “I’ll drive you.”

Barry shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket, which is also too big for him now. It hangs off his shoulders a little awkwardly, goes a little too far down his thighs. “I’d rather bus.”

“Don’t—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head again. The anger, that familiar spark that has accompanied most of his words to Barry in the past few months, dies in an instant so all that’s left is the crease between his brows. “Please. Just let me take you home.”

Barry swallows hard and eyes the bus terminal across the parking lot, but he’s given Joe enough reason to worry already. There are a lot of things he won’t change, a lot of decisions he’ll keep making whether Joe likes it or not, but he can at least give him this small peace of mind.

The first twenty minutes of the car ride back to Barry’s apartment are quiet. Joe’s hated the radio since he started hating new music and the Central City jazz station switched to classic rock, so the only sound to break the silence is the windshield wiper steadily combatting the rain. Barry watches the buildings disappear into each other and misses the greenery he grew up with. It isn’t the same this deep in the city, and sometimes it makes it harder to breathe.

It isn’t until they reach the old aquarium, the one Joe took him to for his twelfth birthday but closed down the following year, that Joe decides to say something. “I’m not trying to control your life, Barry.”

Barry doesn’t turn his eyes from the window. “I know.”

“I just…” Joe sighs, shifting in his seat. He rearranges his hands on the steering so one is draped over the top and the other is resting half in his lap. “I can’t watch you throw it away like this. I won’t.”

His side gives a dull ache like it’s trying to prove Joe’s point, but they both know he’s not talking about the bullet that cut a clean path through his abdomen. Joe’s a cop — people getting shot isn’t the kind of thing that stops him in his tracks anymores, even when it’s Barry. If it had been for any other reason, Joe probably would have sat vigil at his bedside and held his hand through the worst of the pain. The conversation they’d be having right now would be something along the lines of “I’m glad you’re okay,” and “take it easy, would you?” and, maybe, “bet that scar will have all the ladies swooning”.

But it’s not. So instead this is the first time Barry’s seen him in months, the tension between them is thick with the fights they can’t stop having, and the scar on Barry’s stomach isn’t going to make anybody swoon, because the only person who’ll be looking at it is the one who’s responsible for its existence.

Barry closes his eyes. His head hits the headrest and he takes a second to breathe through the pain in his side. They’re almost at his place now, and even though it’s half an hour sooner than it would’ve been by bus, he wishes he’d refused the ride instead of caving in.

“I know,” he says again, because there’s nothing else to say that hasn’t been hurled between them like a weapon already.

Joe sighs again. The windshield wiper swishes back and forth, and the rain continues to beat down on the roof of the car. 

**October 12th, 2000**

“Bathroom’s through there. This is where you’ll be sleeping.”

Barry glances up from his book, taking in Susan hovering in the doorway and the kid standing beside her. His head is shaved, which makes him look even angrier than the expression on his face or the tightness of his shoulders. He scans the room methodically, like he’s doing calculations in his head, and then meets Barry’s eyes. All it takes is a raised eyebrow for him to turn back to his book.

“Here,” says Susan, the floorboards creaking under her feet. “You can take the bunk below Barry.”

The kid doesn’t say anything, just tosses his duffle bag onto the bed and throws himself down after it. Barry can feel Susan still standing awkwardly by the entrance — she doesn’t like to come into the room, except when she’s tearing the older boys’ things apart looking for drugs. She clears her throat, seeming like she might say something else, but instead the only sound that follows is the door closing behind her.

The room drifts back into silence. It’s a Sunday, which means the girls are still at church for the youth group Susan made them join and the boys are all off at their part-time jobs. Barry, who is four years younger than all the rest, is the only one who gets to do whatever he wants when he doesn’t have school. 

He feels the whole bunk shift when the kid below him rolls over too aggressively, the wooden frame knocking against the wall. Barry pulls his lip between his teeth, turning the page only to find he’s finished the chapter.

He should say something. When he’d first gotten here, it was one of the kids who’d been here a while that had helped him settle in. They weren’t close — it hadn’t been a bonding experience and they hadn’t talked about anything other than what was going to be expected of him — but he’d felt a little less like he was drifting aimlessly in a wide open sea with no land in sight. Less out of place, even if he would never call this place home.

Closing his book, he scooches himself up until he’s sitting against the wall, staring down at his sheets like he could see the boy below him if he just stared hard enough. It takes barely a minute for him to chicken out and go back to reading.

A while later, the girls get back and one of them comes drifting into their room, tapping the frame of Barry’s bed in greeting before throwing herself down beside the new kid. The girls are always more excited about fresh faces than they are, and she doesn’t hesitate to start pestering him for his life story. Barry pretends not to listen in, but he spends the next twenty minutes reading the same line over and over again while Leonard — the only information she gets out of him — grows increasingly pissed off.

“Fucking christ,” Leonard swears when she gives up and leaves. He slams his fist against the wall beside his bed, then curses again under his breath. “Is she always like that?”

It takes Barry a second to realize he’s talking to him, and then another to work up the courage to answer. “Rosa?” he says hesitantly. “She’s just curious.”

“She’s a pain in the ass,” Leonard snaps. The bunk shifts again and Barry sets his book down beside him, carefully tucking his bookmark between its pages. He’s never been comfortable with swearing. His parents never did it around him, and even though some of the kids at school throw it around like it’s its own language, it’s never felt right.

It’s an appropriate comment, though. Rosa is a pain. She’s the kind of girl who’s always sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong and then airing everyone else’s business out in the open. Once, she pestered Clay until he told her where he stashed the weed him and his girlfriend were always smoking and afterwards ran right to Susan to tattle. Clay had to pick up four extra shifts at work that week, and got put on cleaning duty for a month while they all pretended not to know that Susan had only taken it to smoke it herself.

After another few minutes of silence, Barry assumes the conversation is over. He’s just reaching for his book again when the he hears a sigh.

“I’m Len.”

His fingers brush the cover.  _ A Wrinkle in Time _ . It’d been next on the list of bedtime stories for his mother to read him, right after they finished the second  _ Percy Jackson _ . Tracing the embossed title with his fingertips, he wonders how long it would have taken them to get through it. Longer than it’s taking him on his own, with nothing else to do here but homework and his chores.

“I heard,” he says eventually, because he did and there’s no point in pretending he wasn’t eavesdropping. “I’m Barry.”

Len lets out a breath that sounds halfway to a laugh. “I heard.”

**May 27th, 2004**

Pulling his bottom lip between his teeth, Barry forces his hand to stop shaking. The muscles in his fingers hurt from being tensed in the same position so long, but he does his best to ignore it.

“Did you kill them?” Mick grumbles from where he’s propped up against the bathtub, one hand curled around the edge and the other fiddling with his lighter.

Len turns his head to pin him with a sharp look, but winces a second later when the movement jars Barry’s hand and the tweezers press into one of his cuts. “Hold still,” Barry snaps, wrapping his free hand around his arm to keep him in place. He’s crouched up beside him on the counter, his knee pressing into his chest where he’s leaned over to get a better angle. His other knee is pressing into Len’s, both out of happenstance and an effort to ease that sick feeling in Barry’s stomach every time he looks at the wounds all over Len’s torso. He can barely see any skin — it’s all a mess of deep red cuts and purple bruises.

He pulls away to drop another tiny piece of glass into the sink behind him. He doesn’t look at him when he asks, “Did you?”

“No,” Len says, but there’s a heat behind it that says  _ almost _ .

Mick scoffs, flicking the clip on his lighter so the flame lights up under his touch. It goes out again a moment later. “Should have.”

None of them say anything after that, but Len turns his head — more carefully this time — to catch Barry’s eye and the look on his face is as easy to read as it usually is to no one but Barry. It’s half an apology, but Barry just shakes his head and goes back to searching Len’s arm for more glass. He wouldn’t be here unless he wanted to, locked in the upstairs bathroom with them while he tends to Len’s wounds and doesn’t comment on how he got them, even when Len tells Mick the full story with him sitting right there.

Barry isn’t naive, and he isn’t the same innocent kid he used to be. He knows the way the world works and, more than that, he knows the way Len’s life works. It’s not unusual for him to get thrown through a window somewhere in the bad part of town, just like it’s not unusual for there to be a gun sticking out of the waistline of his jeans, or for Mick to be asking if he should go burn down the place of the guys who did this without saying a word.

He’s being subtle for Barry’s benefit, trying to keep his hands clean of anything but Len’s blood in all of this.

Barry sighs. He drops the tweezers beside him and rips off some of the gauze, taping up Len’s arm as best he can. He leans back until their knees aren’t touching anymore, wrapping his arm around his shin. Len rolls his shoulder, wincing, and doesn’t look at him.

It’s not often that Barry pulls the fabric of his shirt back to find more than a few bruises, or tugs his hands up to see more than split knuckles. Len can hold his own in a fight better than anyone Barry has ever met, and almost always comes away looking better than his opponent.

“Shouldn’t you be doing homework or something?” Len says very pointedly, folding his arms across his chest despite the way it pulls at his injuries and makes his face go tight.

Barry stares at him. “Is that my cue to leave so you and Mick can discuss how you’re going to get back at them?”

Len just turns his head and stares right back. They end up caught up in some kind of battle of wills via staring contest, neither one willing to back down. Barry because he’s tired of being treated like a kid except for when he’s useful, and Len because… Well, probably for no other reason than that he never backs down from a fight he knows he can win.

Which he does, two minutes later when Mick clears his throat and Barry gives up with an irritated huff. “Fine,” he snaps. He angrily snatches up the rags and tucks them behind some boxes under the sink to be dealt with later. The first aid kit rattles when he tosses everything else back inside of it, and again when he shoves it back onto the shelf.

Len makes a show of rolling his eyes at him. “You’ll thank me when you actually graduate high school, unlike the rest of us.”

_ Fuck you _ , Barry almost says, but all that would do is piss Len off and take him one step further from being privy to their little meetings. The only reason they’ve let him in this far is because his dad’s a doctor.

_ Was _ , that part of Barry that never stopped raging whispers. He places it neatly back in the box it crawled out of.

**July 16th, 2002**

Once, when the bullies at school had been particularly brutal and Barry had been particularly cowardly, his mother had rested her hand over his heart and told him that the goodness there was worth more than the strength it took to throw a punch. He hadn’t been angry then the way he is now, hadn’t been hardened, and so he’d believed her when she told him that hitting someone back was never the right choice.

Now, Barry cleans the blood off of Len’s knuckles and knows that she lied to him. Sometimes, you don’t have a choice. Most times, running is the coward’s way out — the one that always comes back to bite you, again and again, like ouroboros swallowing its own tail — because the fight always finds you, and there are people in the world who will throw you down and watch you bleed just because they can. Most times, the right choice is not to let them.

It’s a lesson Barry has learned quickly. Between the other kids in the home who will take anything he doesn’t cling to like his life depends on it and the kids at school who will rip him apart at the first sign of a stumble, it didn’t take long for him to realize that being passive didn’t dissuade them.

The only thing that did was Len, his knuckles split and that scowl on his face like he’s raging at the whole wide world. That, and the fist Barry threw into Tony’s Woodward’s jaw not long after Len dragged him into the backyard by the hood of his sweater and told him he had to learn to throw a punch or he wouldn’t last the year.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Len says now, soft and lost and everything he wasn’t that night when he taught Barry not to tuck his thumb under his fingers and to always aim for the weak spots.

Barry doesn’t look up. The cloth in his hands was off-white when he started, but now it’s a muddy red that turns to pink when he wrings it in the sink. The blood goes down the drain, leaving a trail behind. He turns the tap on to flush that away, too.

“Don’t,” he whispers, because he doesn’t need protecting.

Len just puts his free hand over his to stop him from wiping down his knuckles a tenth time. “Barry,” he whispers. “Please. You shouldn’t have to see this.”

Barry wonders what ‘this’ is. Is it the crack in Len’s lip where someone bashed the butt of a gun into his chin? The splits in his knuckles where Len hit them back twice as hard? The blood that’s dripping through the pipes now but that used to be in someone else’s body, someone who is either in an ambulance or being stitched up by dirty hands that don’t know what they’re doing?

He’s seen worse. The gang violence that runs rampant in these parts of town is nothing compared to the sight of his mother that night in the living room.

He can’t say that, though. There are some things you don’t talk about, even with the only person you think you might be able to trust.

“I already have. Let me finish. You don’t want this getting infected.”

Len doesn’t respond, though the truth is they both know he could do this on his own. It’s not rocket science and, though it’d be awkward scrubbing the dirt off his palms one-handed, there are no wounds in hard to reach places. It’s not like Barry knows the drill better than he does either — Len has done this a thousand more times than he has, already had the alcohol on the counter when Barry came in and took over.

That’s not why Barry’s here, crowding into his space in the too-small bathroom across from their bedroom at three in the morning, both of them whispering so they don’t wake any of the girls in the room beside them. He’s here because Len came into this house thinking it was him against the world, because Barry picked that thought up for himself two months before he showed up after the second time Joe promised him it wouldn’t be much longer, and Barry will be damned if they both leave still believing it. 

Len is… Not a friend, exactly, and not even an ally, but he’s someone who understands what it’s like to feel unmoored, a ship without an anchor in the middle of a storm.

On nights like these where the wind is especially brutal and the waves threaten to pull the whole ship down under the surface, it’s nice to have company if nothing else.

“I’m almost done,” Barry tells him. When he turns to reach for the alcohol to disinfect the wounds, Len’s hand squeezes his. Their eyes meet, Len’s expression caught somewhere between apologetic and annoyed.

His voice is quieter than Barry’s ever heard it when he whispers, “Thank you.” Turning his hand over underneath Len’s, Barry squeezes it back and wonders if maybe they’re allies after all. He’s not sure what the war is or who they’re fighting — everyone, maybe — but whatever it is, they’re on the same side.

**January 18th, 2015**

_ Barry (3:09): Whoever you think you’re helping, it isn’t me. _

Barry tosses his phone across the couch with a deep sigh. He sinks down until his head is touching the backrest, tilting it up and up until he can stare at the paint on the ceiling like it holds all the answers. There’s an empty bottle of vodka on the coffee table, but he still feels heavy.

He should get up and make something to eat, but his side is killing him and the kitchen is so far away he’s not sure he could make the trek. The doctors gave him strict orders to take care of himself, keep up his energy, make sure his body is getting everything it needs to heal, but it doesn’t matter. There’s no one here to yell at him for it. There’s no one here, period.

He hadn’t thought it’d hit him quite so hard, the emptiness. Yet, last night when he’d laid in bed alone, unable to sleep, the quiet of the apartment had crept up on him and twisted something nasty inside his stomach. It isn’t even that he’s used to someone’s arms around him — he isn’t. The difference is that this is one of the few times in his life where he’s felt like he needs someone, only to have them up and disappear on him.

It’s not like he’s never been disappointed by someone before. It’s just that this was the one person he’d trusted he could rely on.

“Fuck,” he mutters. It echoes back to him.

It’s been fourteen years since he’s felt like this. An angry little boy, all alone in the world with every odd stacked up against him.

He’s pulled out of it by the sound of his phone buzzing against the coffee table. It takes a moment to realize someone’s calling it, and then another to reach over and pick it up. Though the screen reads PRIVATE CALLER, he knows who it is.

The line is silent for a long minute, during which Barry stares at the wall across the room and doesn’t think about how wrong this feels. Eventually, a gruff voice comes through, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Barry says. All of the things he’d wanted to say — some of which he’s already sent via angry text — feel out of place now, so instead he shuts his mouth and waits.

There is the sound of breathing, cut through by static. It goes on so long Barry stops hearing it until, finally, Len speaks up again. “I don’t think we should see each other.”

“For how long?” Barry asks. He’s used to this same old song and dance. It happens every time things go to shit more than usual and Len has to go underground or fall off the radar for a while. When new gangs crop up in alarming numbers through the city, or when someone Len pissed off gets out of jail with a chip still on their shoulder, or when the cops start digging around a little harder for something to put him away with.

“For…” Len sighs, and Barry knows he was going to say  _ forever _ , but thought better of it. They never deal in absolutes. “I can’t keep putting you in danger, Barry,” he says instead, because even though this is another topic that’s always been off the table, it’s one that’s always been on the tip of Len’s tongue. Barry knows that, the same way he knows that Len has always had both feet in the doorway, halfway between a life with Barry and a life in the shadows.

Barry just scoffs. “Don’t act like I’m some defenseless damsel who needs to be protected. I don’t. And stop trying to make my decisions for me. I want to be with you. I know what comes with that. I don’t care.”

“I’m not— Stop pretending like it’s  _ fine _ , damn it! You got shot. You could’ve fucking died, and it would’ve been because of me. I’m sorry that I’m not okay with that. It’s not just you and your feelings in this relationship, Barry.”

He’s pissed, the kind of anger that’s not usually directed at anyone he cares about. For a moment, Barry thinks of that time he beat Tony Woodward’s face into the asphalt behind the school because he slammed his fist into Barry’s stomach. The anger leaves him like it always has — quietly, barely even noticeable, and long before it ever reaches a point of boiling over. He’s always been the opposite of Len in that regard.

“I know that,” Barry tells him softly. “Of course I know that. And if you need time to get your head on right, to be upset and figure stuff out and not see me until I’m fully healed, that’s fine. I understand. Just… I’m just not going to let you play the martyr and bail on me. We’re in this together, remember?”

_ I love you, remember? _

He tries to sound confident, calm, the way that works best here. The hope finds its way into his voice nonetheless, and that desperation is bubbling just under the surface. It’s never scared Len off before — if anything, it was what first drew him in — but Barry thinks Len probably doesn’t need to think of him as something fragile right now.

The silence is telling, even before Len responds.

“You know I’ll always be there when you need me,” Len says very, very carefully. “But I think it’s for the best if we stop here. This is my life, my world. You shouldn’t be a part of it.”

_ Oh _ , Barry thinks, and leans forward until he can wrap his hand around his forehead and squeeze his eyes shut. 

**April 3rd, 2008**

The apartment is not quiet at all when Barry gets there, despite the late hour. More than half the lights are on, and there is what sounds like a party going on in one of the upstairs units. On his way up the stairs he catches the tail end of a couple screaming at each other over the dulcet tones of a baby crying. By the time he reaches the fourth floor, he’s already starting to get a headache and the exhaustion he woke up with twenty minutes ago has only doubled.

Mick opens the door for him with a tight expression that tells him everything he needs to know. They nod to each other, bags under both their eyes, and Barry slips past him without acknowledging the blood streaked down the front of his shirt.

The living room is a shitstorm. There are papers strewn about the low coffee table, spilling over onto the floor, with three guns acting as paperweights. There’s a heap of rags that used to be white but are now pink piled up beside the first aid case that’s been tossed aside, a roll of gauze sitting on the arm of the couch.

And there, in the middle of chaos, is Len, hunched over in the middle of the couch with bandages for a shirt and a look on his face like the only thing he wants to do is fight something.

The look fades as soon as Barry crouches down in front of him, replaced with relief. He reaches out his hands and Barry takes them, folding them between his in Len’s lap.

“Hey,” he says, with a tired smile.

Len doesn’t bother trying to smile back. “Hey.” Then, even more softly. “I’m glad you came.”

Squeezing his hands, Barry runs his thumb over the joints of Len’s fingers, his eyes never leaving Len’s face. “Of course I came. I always do.”

He does. It’s one of the few constants they’ve had — one calls, and the other comes, no matter how much they really shouldn’t or how long it takes to get there.

Joe’s upset with him for it. He keeps telling Barry to cut ties, telling him he’s better than this and not to get involved. Barry doesn’t blame him, but he also isn’t going to listen when he knows it’s just because Joe doesn’t understand. All he sees when he looks at Len and the other kids Barry grew up with in that house are a bunch of criminals. Street thugs, thieves, people with no one to miss them when they’re found in a pool of their own vomit down some dark alley, with a bullet in their brain on the side of the road.

And maybe that’s true, but what’s also true is that Barry isn’t separate from that. It isn’t him and then them the way Joe prefers to believe. Just because he isn’t running drugs or wearing gang colours doesn’t mean this isn’t his world, too. He grew up on the wrong side of the town with the rest of them, sharing clothes with the kid who held up that convenience store on fifth street and meals with the girl they found overdosed behind a dumpster two months ago.

He can’t just walk away from that.

“What happened this time?” he asks, pulling one hand free to check over Len’s face, running over the top of his head and coming to rest on the back of his neck. “How bad are you hurt?”

Len gives a breathy laugh, pushing his hands away to pull them back between his own. “I’m fine. It’s not that bad. Just a couple bruises.” The pink of the bandages that wrap around his torso say otherwise, but Barry decides not to comment. Relatively speaking, it is just a couple of bruises. He’s had a lot worse. “I really just wanted to see you.”

Barry rocks back onto his heels, tilting his head back to pin Len with a look. “At four AM? You couldn’t have waited until morning? I thought you were dying.”

“No, you didn’t,” Len replies immediately. “If I were, Mick would’ve been the one calling.”

“That’s not—” Barry shakes his head. He lets out a breath, which turns into a short laugh. Leaning their foreheads together, he closes his eyes and rests one hand on each side of Len’s face, the way he used to do to Barry when they were younger and he couldn’t stop shaking. “I missed you too.”

When Len kisses him, his lips are chapped and rough on Barry’s. Years ago, Barry had thought Len would kiss the same way he lived — cold, rough, a little angry. He’d been wrong. Len’s kisses are always gentle, like he’s trying to convey everything he isn’t soft enough to say out loud. Even when their noses bump and Len breathes out a laugh against his mouth, it’s perfect.

“Barry,” Len whispers against him, their foreheads pressed together and his breath fanning Barry’s cheek.

Barry shushes him with another soft kiss. Squeezing the back of Len’s neck, he tucks his head into his shoulder. “I know,” he says. “I know, it’s okay. We’re in this together, right?”

If he’s being honest, they aren’t really in it together. This part of Len’s life has always been separate from Barry, a black box of unknown where he only gets to see the aftermath. No matter how many times he patches up Len’s wounds or holds him when he comes home with too much blood on his hands, no matter how assertively he tells Len to do what he has to do, they are always separate when one of them walks out that door. Len, to the streets or whatever seedy part of the underground he’s been pulled into this time, and Barry, back to his one bedroom apartment a few blocks closer to the nice part of town and the college classes Joe is paying for out of guilt.

That’s not what it means anymore, though. Now, when their lives are only getting further and further apart, becoming filled with more and more pieces they can’t share with each other,  _ we’re in this together _ just means  _ I love you _ .  _ I’m here, if you need me _ .

**November 8th, 2017**

Barry had always preferred winter to any other season. The snow on the trees, the crispness of the air, the way everything seemed suspended in motion and time crawled on ever so slowly. Not to mention the memories of Christmas with his parents, making snow angels in the backyard with his mom, or failing miserably at stacking snowballs into snowmen with Iris.

As such, November had always felt like a promise. Not quite winter, but the first signs that it was on its way. Caught somewhere in the in-between, where the trees had lost nearly all their leaves but not yet been coated in a thick layer of snow. Everything was barren, and the cold had only just started to really set in, but it was beautiful for it. The quiet death before everything was reborn again in spring.

This November just feels empty. Barry watches from his seat by the wide bay window as another leaf drifts from its branch to join the others that have covered the ground all around the oak tree just outside. It’s nearly naked now — nothing but branches and a couple of stragglers. Normally, he’d find it beautiful.

Iris hands him a steaming mug of hot chocolate as she takes the seat beside him, nursing one of her own. He smiles at her in gratitude, turning back to watch the world outside die every so slightly more with each minute that passes.

They sit like that for a while. It’s been a long time since they’ve had a moment like this, where they can exist in the same space, comfortable enough for the silence not to feel stifling. It’s become a rarity for Barry with anyone, these days, and he’s grateful to be here with her. Even if it’s nothing like when they were younger and used to build forts in the snow together, he’s missed her.

Like she can read his mind, Iris takes a sip of her drink and says, “We should build a snowman when it finally snows.”

Barry hesitates. The earliest it ever snows in Central is the last week of the month, when the fall drinks have left the shops and it’s officially time to break out the Christmas lights. In the grand scheme of things, it isn’t that far away. Yet, they both know what kind of commitment that is. It’s strange to realize Iris thinks they’ll still be speaking by then.

“Yeah,” Barry agrees. He runs his thumb along the lettering of his mug — one he’s seen many times on game nights with the Wests growing up, but not at all in the years since his mom died. It would be easy to get lost in the past, but instead he focuses on the heat and weight of it in his hand.

He smiles at her, a little more certain. “That’d be nice.”

**February 2nd, 2015**

Joe is waiting outside his apartment when he gets home from work, leaning against his door with his hands in his pockets and a far-away look on his face. He seems jarred when Barry breaks him out of it.

“Hey,” he says. For all the years Barry’s known him, it’s still a rarity to hear him sound so uncertain.

“Hey,” Barry replies. He moves around Joe to unlock his door and step into his apartment. He doesn’t invite him in, but Joe follows anyway, carefully closing the door behind him and standing awkwardly in the entryway as Barry toes off his shoes. It isn’t until he’s hung up his coat and already started towards the kitchen that Joe finally breaks the uncomfortable standstill they’re in.

“Listen, kid,” he sighs, scrubbing a hand down his face. “You know that I care about you. Nothing’s ever going to change that.” He pauses, looking at Barry with that tight expression that hasn’t left in months. “It’s because I care that I can’t just… sit around and watch you throw your life away.”

They stand ten feet apart, looking at each other from across the hardwood floor. If Barry didn’t know any better, he would think this was an intervention and Joe was here to hold him down kicking and screaming until he agreed to give up on Len and whatever other bad choices Joe thinks he’s been making.

But Barry does know better, and he’s heard this speech before. It’s still fresh in his mind, too raw to be packed into a neat little box like everything else that makes his blood boil and his heart clench.

Joe can’t even look at him anymore. “I can’t be involved in this, Barry. I’m sorry, but you’re on your own from here on out. If you…” He swallows, shoves his hands deeper into the pockets of his coat. “If you decide you want out, or if you get out and you need a little help standing on your feet again, I’m only a phone call away.”

The implied  _ don’t call me unless you’re done with this shit _ is louder than Joe’s firm but cautious tone, and Barry stares at the painting on the wall behind him until it’s nothing but a blur of black and white.

Joe hovers like he’s waiting for something. Probably, for Barry to break down and beg him to change his mind, or to duck his head in shame and finally admit he has a problem and that he needs help. To finally lean on and confide in this man who has always done his best to fill the parent-shaped hole in Barry’s life.

There are a lot of things Barry has learned throughout the years, but the fact that sometimes your best just isn’t good enough is one that has stuck with him particularly well.

“Okay,” he says. He doesn’t say anything else.

Joe spares him one last sad, tired look, and then he’s gone.

**March 3rd, 2001**

They’re in the living room, sitting on opposite couches. Barry can hear the other boys yelling upstairs — the new one, Mick, and Clay arguing over who stole who’s shit. The house is never silent with so many angry bodies, and though Barry’s gotten used to the noise, Joe keeps looking at the stairs like he can’t decide if he should go up and see what’s going on.

“I’m sorry, Barry,” he’s saying. His hands are folded between his knees, twice the size of Barry’s and well-practiced in the art of defense. “You know I’m trying. These things just take time.”

“I know,” Barry says. On any other day he would’ve made it sound more reassuring than placating, but his head still hurts from where Tony Woodward and his buddies slammed it into a locker and he spent all of last night staring at the new kid’s sleeping form, terrified to fall asleep and wake up to the house on fire.

_ How much time? _ he wants to ask, but he knows Joe doesn’t have the answer and he’s starting to think it might be never.

He stares at the stains on his sneakers — the same ones he’s been wearing since Joe first dropped him off here, and for seven days before that. A birthday gift from his dad.

He almost tells Joe about Tony, and about the things the other kids here are involved in, and how scared he is to walk home from school after the shooting just down the road. But he thinks about Len telling him to man up and stop being so scared, and he shuts his mouth.

It’ll be over soon, he thinks. He’ll go home with Joe and get to drink hot cocoa with Iris, get to have his own room and not have to worry about anyone going through his things while he’s not there.

It’ll be over.

_ And if it isn’t? _ that quiet part of him that’s been getting louder and louder the past year whispers in the back of his mind. He ignores it. Joe will come through for him. He’d never abandon him.

**December 14th, 2003**

“We’re corrupting him,” Mick snorts, not sounding very concerned. He’s pulling the bottle of vodka out of Barry’s hands, probably so he doesn’t get hit in the face with it.

Len shoots him a look that Barry, three sheets to the wind, doesn’t understand. He’s far away, despite their knees being pressed together. He has been all night, which is why Barry followed them out to the backyard in the first place, why he took the bottle from him with a defiant look and took the longest swig he could when Len only scowled back.

It’s frustrating. Len’s frustrating. They’ve been doing this same song and dance for years now, letting each other in to see the ugly parts only to push each other away when it starts to seem like they care about each other.

“I don’t mind,” Barry says, reaching for the bottle again.

Mick lets him have it with no resistance. “Not a kid anymore, eh Barry?”

“Guess not,” Len agrees, but he’s watching him closely. He looks a little proud, if Barry can read him right, and it only makes him want to drink more.

It’s an odd feeling, being drunk. He’s seen it on other people, seen it on Mick and Len more times than he can count, but it’s nothing like he’d thought it’d be. The world feels brighter — like he’s floating, like his thoughts are too far away to catch on anything serious.

He’s happy, is what it is. Carefree. He leans closer to Len without thinking of the consequences and laughs without the guilt of finding joy in a world without his mom.

It’s dangerous, this feeling, but at fourteen he doesn’t know it yet.

**February 20th, 2001**

Barry pulls his t-shirt up over his mouth, trying to muffle his sobs, but his hands are shaking and he keeps forgetting himself. It’s late, the whole house dark and quiet and promising hell to pay if he makes too much noise and wakes someone up.

He’s left the faucet running. The sound of the water running fills the tiny bathroom. He should turn it off, but he’s curled up on the floor in front of the bathtub and it feels too far away, an impossible task.

Once when he was six, the creaking of their house had him convinced there were monsters all around him. He’d spent twenty minutes darting wild eyes around his room, keeping watch, unable to sleep, until his mother had come in to check on him.

“Baby,” she’d said, holding him close while he trembled and cried. “There’s no such thing as monsters.”

At the time, he’d believed her. And if he hadn’t, he’d trusted her to keep him safe. The shaking had stopped, his tears dried up, and he’d gone to bed curled up around her.

Now, his heart pounds wildly in his chest and the water he’d splashed over his face is hot on his skin. He can’t make it stop — he’s been trying for hours, but there’s no comfort in the knowledge that monsters are real and all around him. It’s a knowledge that cost his mother her life, that coated the creaky floorboards in her blood, that turned her cardigan red, that—

Hands close around the sides of his face and Barry’s eyes fly open, meeting Len’s. The faucet’s off and he’s crouched in front of him, looking half asleep but like he’s trying to wake himself up enough to deal with whatever he’s just walked into.

“It’s okay,” he tries to say reassuringly. “I’ve got you.”

It should be strange, having Len — who he barely knows and who has only ever shown himself to be angry and cold — try to comfort him, but Barry doesn’t question it. He sobs, then catches himself, then gives up and curls into Len’s shoulder, trying to block out the grief and the panic and the pain with the feeling of someone’s arms around him and the cold tile of the bathroom floor.

**April 30th, 2018**

He’s at Joe’s when it happens, hanging out on the couch with a cup of coffee while Joe and Iris make dinner. They’d been hoping for word on when the storm would clear and it would be safe to leave the house, so the news is droning on in the background while Iris argues with her father over what vegetables to put in the stew.

They don’t hear it. He stares at the TV, at that face he knows so well but hasn’t seen in years, and the newscaster’s voice drifts in and out.

_ Grand larceny, drug trafficking, arms dealing. On trial. Lack of evidence. Released. _

It feels out of place to be hearing this here in the West house where Len has never been welcome. To be watching him walk away from a courthouse, clear of charges Barry didn’t even know he was facing, and to feel so removed from it.

That old part of him, that open wound he’s been pretending is a scar, aches.

“You didn’t tell me you’d arrested him,” he says very carefully when Joe finds his way into the living room twenty minutes later. He looks him in the eye, stiff and unmoving on the couch, unwilling to back down.

Joe’s lips purse. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you anymore and I wasn’t about to let you get involved with it again.”

_ It _ . Len has never been a person to Joe, or to the rest of Central City for that matter. He’s that dark figure they use to scare their kids, to point at and feel better about themselves because they would never do what he’s done.

They don’t understand. They haven’t the cigarette burns his father left, the scars from when he tried to get out of this and Lewis took a bat to him. They haven’t cleaned the blood from his knuckles and the haunted look from his eyes, haven’t seen the war within himself up close every day for years.

It’s surprisingly easy to slip back into this.

This old fight with Joe despite two years of rebuilding what’s been broken between them. This old feeling of being up against the world. This old ache for someone he’s never been allowed to have.

He leaves the Wests before the storm has cleared, fighting his way through the rain and thunder until he can get home and pound his fists into the pillows. The lightning and the late hour are the only things stopping him from finding the nearest bar and drinking until he forgets how fucked everything is.

**October 25th, 2016**

“Got a light?” someone behind him asks.

Barry turns his head to take in the man joining him on the steps of the church. His hair is greying, wrinkles creasing up the corners of his eyes, and he’s got that kind, fatherly air about him that always sets Barry on edge. Another thing he should work on, probably.

“No, sorry,” he replies, offering a tight smile.

He pushes his hands a little deeper into his coat pockets, leaning against the support beam. He’s got a grip on the phone in his pocket, still debating whether or not to call a cab.

The man beside him turns out not to have needed a light at all, pulling a lighter from his pocket and setting it to the end of his cigarette. Barry glances sideways at him only to find him looking back appraisingly.

“You look about ready to bolt,” he says moderately. He sniffs, letting the smoke billow out of his mouth. “I remember my first meeting I ducked out the back ten minutes in. Didn’t make it back for two months. But I swear this hokey pokey shit’ll work if you stick it out. I’ve got six years now thanks to it.”

Barry swallows hard, scowling down at his feet. “That’s not it,” he snaps. “I just don’t think I need this.”

The man just gives him a long look. “That’s what they all say. I got news for you, though, kid. If you didn’t need it, you wouldn’t have come.”

**January 26th, 2015**

It’s desperation that has him calling Mick, pacing back and forth in the apartment. It’s also the whiskey he hasn’t stopped drinking since he woke up this morning and had no new messages or missed calls.

“ _ Please _ ,” he begs when Mick picks up on the last ring.

Mick sighs. “I’m sorry, kid,” he says, and sounds like he means it.

Barry throws the empty bottle at the wall. “ _ Fuck! _ ”

The line goes dead, and Barry stares at the mess that he’s made, feeling like the world is turning but it shouldn’t be. It’s while he’s sitting on the floor across from all the broken glass that he lets the call get to him, that he thinks about what Mick apologizing means, because Mick isn’t someone who has ever apologized for anything in his life.

For the first time, Barry is completely alone. His parents aren’t here to kiss his forehead and tell him it’ll be okay. There’s no Joe checking in on him every couple weeks. There’s no Clay or Rosa dragging him out to parties. There’s no Iris curling up on the couch with him to drink hot chocolate and watch cartoons. There’s no Len, the only person who has always been there when he needed him.

It’s just him, alone, with a million shards of glass and a gunshot wound in his abdomen because he’s always,  _ always _ trusted too much in other people.

**September 12th, 2004**

The door slamming is loud in the silence of Joe’s anger. Barry waits patiently in the back seat of the squad car, arms folded over his chest and mouth set as he watches Joe climb into the driver’s seat.

He doesn’t turn the key. Instead, they sit in tense, raging silence while the clock on the dashboard ticks through ten minutes.

Finally, Barry loses his patience. “Are you going to say anything?”

Joe meets his gaze in the overhead mirror. Everything about him is tense, but Barry can’t read him. “I really don’t know what to say.”

Barry swallows. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, tucking his arms even tighter around himself.

“I don’t understand.” Joe shakes his head. “You’re a good kid, Barry. You’ve always been a good kid. Trespassing? With the Santini kid? What the hell were you thinking?”

“I…” Barry trails off. He can’t tell Joe what he was thinking, or what he was doing. It feels like dangerous territory here. Maybe if Miles Santini were a girl, or maybe if his last name wasn’t Santini, or maybe if Joe didn’t look so worried. But all of these are true, and besides, Joe stopped being someone he could come to with the truth a long time ago.

“It’s those kids,” Joe decides for himself. “I told the judge they’d be a bad influence, that you shouldn’t be living with a bunch of drug addicts and gang runners.” He makes a frustrated sound, scrubbing a hand down his face. “You’d never have even thought about this if you were living with me.”

“But I’m not,” Barry snaps, boiling with that familiar anger that always comes when he’s reminded of this. “I’m not living with you and I’m not your fucking son, so stop acting like you know what’s best for me.”

He tries to make a dramatic exit, shoving at the car door, before he remembers they’re in a police cruiser and the back doors are locked. So instead he sits there, fuming, while Joe snaps his head around to look at him.

“Barry,” he says, sounding wrecked. “I’m sorry.”

He’s heard that a lot in the past five years. It’s starting to feel like an excuse to keep hurting him, to disappoint him and be forgiven every time. It’s starting to feel like nothing but empty words.

**October 8th, 2003**

The first time Barry kisses Len, it’s in the cramped upstairs bathroom. The world is dark outside the window and the lighting dim and there are bruises on Len’s hands where they gently push him away.

“You’re misreading things,” Len tells him, and he tries to be kind about it. He’s too firm, though, too cold, like Barry is just another person in the world who isn’t on his side.

He feels sick, like his skin fits wrong. He climbs off the counter, hitting Len’s shoulder as he does, and pushes his way through the door with a muttered apology and no eye contact.

In the morning, Len pretends nothing happened and Barry pretends he doesn’t exist, that they haven’t spent three years becoming each other’s only comfort.

**February 19th, 2007**

The lights of the city dance over their legs, tangled in the sheets. It’s a view they never had growing up — the chaos of the inner city where there are fewer shadows to hide in. Barry traces the scars on Len’s torso with careful fingers, trying not to picture the story that accompanies each one.

There are some that he knows, some that he stitched up himself. Those are the ones that catch the light and remind him that Len is someone who won’t go down without a fight. There are others that he doesn’t, cigarette burns and faded lines that have been there since before they met. Those, Barry tries not to think about. He doesn’t want to be reminded that Len is human, too, and that sometimes there are fights he can’t win.

“I’m sorry,” Len murmurs.

Barry frowns, turning his head up to look at him. “For what?”

There’s something soft and vulnerable in Len’s expression that he’s never seen before. “I shouldn’t have let this happen. I… I shouldn’t have let this get this far.”

Barry pulls back, a sick feeling swimming up inside of him. It’s unsurprising, though. This is always how it goes — everything is good, perfect, until they shift one toe too far forward and Len goes back to pretending none of it ever happened, that they’re just two people who grew up adjacent to each other, never touching.

Still, the sting is worse this time.

“Right,” he says, and he can’t keep the unhappiness from his voice. “Of course. You can leave now and we can go the next four years pretending this never happened.”

“Barry,” Len pleads, grabbing his arm when he starts to get up. He drags him back to his chest, tucking him in against him. “I’m sorry. That’s not— I’m not—”

He trails off. It’s never been Len’s strong suit, being honest about things like this.

“I don’t want this to end. I want you. Of course I want you. I always do. It’s just that you deserve so much better than this, than what I can give you. You were supposed to be the good one, Barry, the one who finishes school and goes to college and gets a good job and… _gets_ _out_. How are you supposed to do that if I’m here dragging you into all this?”

Barry lets out a breath. He wraps his arm around Len’s side, kisses his chest, takes a moment to let the sickness wear off.

“Len,” he says, as patiently as he can. “You have to know by now that it doesn’t matter if we’re together or if we’re just… whatever we were before. I can’t leave you. I’m already in this.”

**November 1st, 2019**

_ Unknown (23:46): Motorcar at noon, Friday _

Barry reads the text over again, tapping his fingers against the table in an offbeat rhythm. His coffee is untouched in front of him, most definitely cold by now, and the waitress keeps frowning at him like she’s concerned.

He wants a drink. A real drink. The kind that burns as it goes down and makes all his problems disappear for a night, or two, or a couple of years, or however long he keeps drinking. His whole body is aching for it, his fingers twitching like they want to close around the neck of a bottle.

He checks the time, 11:59, just as the bell above the door chimes.

He almost laughs — Len is nothing if not punctual — but there are too many other feelings taking up root inside him to leave any room for humour.

“Hi,” Len says, sinking into the booth across from him. When Barry only stares at him, he scrubs a hand through his hair — a little longer than he remembers — and lets out a shaky breath. “God, you look good.”

_ Good? _ Barry thinks, and feels that rage he always keeps so carefully bottled up spill over.

“The last time you saw me I was bleeding out all over you, so I’m sure anything seems like an improvement,” he snaps, just to see Len flinch. It doesn’t feel as good as he’d thought it would.

He sounds so pained when he says, “I’m so sorry. You have to know that. I never meant for—”

“I don’t care that the shit you do got me fucking shot,” Barry cuts him off, because this has been brewing for four years without anyway to let it out. “I care that you abandoned me after, when I needed you. Something we said we’d never do. So what the fuck do you want now, Len?”

“I…” He stops. He looks around the diner, numbers running in his head like they always are, ever since the first time they saw each other. There’s a new scar on his face, through his eyebrow, and he looks like he’s gained some muscle.

It’s odd, seeing how time has passed. How the world has kept turning for each of them even though they weren’t together.

Barry purses his lips. Beneath the anger, and much stronger, is everything else he’s always felt for him. “I saw you on the news. How’d you get them to drop the case?”

Len turns back to him. He looks thrown for a second, but he recovers as quickly as ever. “You don’t want to know.” He shakes his head, that annoying look on his face that means he’s not going to elaborate. He glances back up at Barry, and this time he looks hesitant. Afraid, almost. “But… But I do want you to know that it’s over. I’m getting out.”

Barry only looks at him.

“Is that why you’re here?”

“Yes,” Len breathes. “You don’t know how hard it’s been, being without you. But I couldn’t let you get hurt again. And if I’m out we can…”

“We can what, Len? We can be together?” He shakes his head, covering his face with his hands. He feels the urge to cry. “I’m glad you’re happy, that you got out like you wanted. But that doesn’t mean the past four years just disappear. We can’t just pick back up where we left off. Where you left me.”

“I know,” Len says carefully, even though the expression on his face is as close to devastation as Barry has ever seen on him. “I know it’s not fair to ask. And I know you probably have a life now that doesn’t include me. You seem good. Really good. I don’t want to ruin that. Just…”

He shakes his head. “I’m leaving. The 10th. We’re going to start over somewhere else. Somewhere we can walk down the street like normal people and not have to worry about who’s after us. I don’t know where, I just know…” He pauses, reaching across the table for Barry’s hand. “Come with me. We can start a life together. Like we’ve always wanted.”

Barry pulls his hand away. “I can’t,” he says, because he’s not the same person he was four years ago. Because all he wants right now is a drink but he hasn’t had one, and he and Joe have finally put the past behind him, and there’s a beautiful girl who works at the coffee shop he always goes to who just asked him out.

It takes everything in him and more to walk away, but he does. 

**July 7th, 2005**

Barry’s the only one awake when Len stumbles home in the dark, his boots clunking up the stairs until he gets to where Barry is sitting right at the top.

They don’t talk for a long moment. Len stares at him, those dark bags under his eyes, his hoodie still pulled up over his head, and Barry hugs his knees. He doesn’t back down like he usually would, the worry that’s kept him here all night lighting that defiant fire inside him.

“What?” Len asks finally, defensive. There’s an angry set to his jaw, a look in his eyes like he’s prepared to fight the world. He always gets like this on these nights — nights where he disappears for hours, sometimes days, and creeps back in like a thief stealing his way into a house he doesn’t belong in.

Lewis, Barry knows without having to ask. Len’s father. That’s always what it is.

He shrugs, looking away. He stares at the front door, the narrow crooked steps between them. “Why do you do it if you hate it so much?”

Len’s teeth clench, his fist wrapped around the railing. “You don’t get it, Barry,” Len snaps. “It’s.. This is just the way the world works. Sometimes you have to do shit you don’t want to. Not everyone has a choice.”

Barry shakes his head. “You could, if you wanted to. You could just ignore him when he calls. Stay here.” He stands, smoothing out the wrinkles in his pajamas. He runs a hand through his hair and darts a cautious look at Len. Still pissed, even more so now. He looks away, making for the bedroom.

He’s stopped by a hand on his wrist, keeping him there.

“Barry,” Len says instead of snaps this time. When he turns to look at him, he looks less like he’s ready to jump into a fight and more like he’s been bracing for it for years and is getting tired of being so on guard all the time.

Carefully, Barry brings a hand up to his cheek. It feels dangerous here in the yellow light of the upstairs landing, and Len’s breath catches against him.

For a long moment, they stare at each other.

Then, Len whispers, “I wish you could understand.” He looks pained the way he did when he showed up at Barry’s school to tell him they’d found Rosa dead in that alley.

The thing is, Barry does understand. He isn’t in this the same way the rest of them are — he doesn’t have to worry about where to stash his gun or how he’s going to get his next score or who’s going to come after him if he doesn’t build up enough of a reputation — but he knows this world as well as anyone.

He’s seen the war that goes on inside Len every time his father calls, every time he’s made to do something he doesn’t want to, every time he’s pulled deeper into a dark world he’s not sure he wants to be a part of. He held Rosa’s hair back when she was glued to the bathroom floor spilling out her guts after a bad batch.

He’s bloodied his hands on Tony’s face. He spent more than one night out in the woods, doing dangerous things with that kid who got gunned down four months ago in another turf war between rival gangs.

Barry doesn’t say any of that, especially the last part. He thinks it’s some kind of comfort to Len, keeping Barry compartmentalized from all of this, like maybe he needs something that hasn’t been touched by the shitty world he’s spent his whole life being dragged into.

So instead Barry kisses him very carefully, one ear out for anything that indicates someone else has woken up. He closes his eyes, resting their foreheads together.

“I don’t need to,” he says. “I’m here, with you, no matter what.”

**November 10th, 2019**

The airport is crowded. There’s only one in Central City and none in the three towns that surround it. The crowd is so thick it’s hard to see anything, and the security line takes two hours, and the entire time his heart pounds hard in his chest.

_ You’re making a mistake _ , nearly all of him screams.  _ You’re throwing your life away. _

It sounds like Joe. Or like his sponsor. Or like what he sometimes imagines his parents would if they were here.

Nearly all of him. It’s that one tiny piece that keeps him shoving through people and frantically searching for the gate. It’s the part that told him to stop believing Joe when he said it would be any day now, that sent his fist into Tony Woodward’s cheek, that led to him having sex with Miles Santini, that drew him to Len in the first place.

The part that always aches. That can never be soothed, no matter how well he has his shit together, or how many family dinners with the Wests he attends, or how hard he tries to be the good person everyone wants him to be.

It’s the part that’s been angry with the world since his father took a steak knife to his mother’s chest, that’s been disappointed by everyone he’s dared to trust, that’s always burned inside him except for when he’s cleaning the blood off of Len’s knuckles.

_ We’re in this together _ . Ships casting anchor in a storm, waiting it out together under the dark sky.

There is no out for him. Not when it comes to Len. It’s always been them against the world.

**Author's Note:**

> This has been a work in progress for so long and I'm so excited to finally be sharing it! It's one of my favourites that I've written recently. It wouldn't have happened without the DCU Bang, or without the lovely people on the FlashTrash discord, so thank you a million to everyone involved!
> 
> If you liked it or if you didn't and want to leave some constructive criticism, please feel free to leave a comment! I read and appreciate every single one <3
> 
> You can also find me on [Tumblr](https://frozenflash.tumblr.com) as frozenflash!


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